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I have progressed pretty far in Japanese, but when I construct Japanese sentences, I still get these two particles mixed up. For example, when talking about being inside something, I don't know when to use "の中に" and when to use "の中で." Likewise, when speaking about being next to something, I sometimes don't know if I should use "となりに" or "となりで." How do you know which one to use in a sentence?

に looks like a patella on the left with the gap of femur and tibia on the right, so in English your "knee" に, the thing you bend to go TO a location. That helped me remember...
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BillyNairJul 16 '12 at 20:53

8 Answers
8

In general, で is where an action is performed and に is the "direction" toward/to/into which the result of an action happens.

部屋の中で泣いています → I'm crying in the room / "The place where I'm at while I'm crying is in the room"

部屋の中に泣いています → I'm crying into the room (meaning like, your tears are flowing from your face into the room). This doesn't make sense unless you happen to be talking about where your tears flow when you cry. In the case of the English saying "crying in my beer", ビールの中に泣いています would make sense, although that's an idiom that you probably wouldn't directly translate.

The other example

部屋の中にいます → I'm in the room ("My existence results in something being in the room (namely, me)" -- ??)

部屋の中でいます → "The place where I am doing my existence is the room" - Since existing is not really a (one-time) "performable" action, this doesn't make sense.

Hi istrasci, thanks a lot for your explanation, it's really helpful. However, one example in my text book: "日本語のクラスには日本語を話しましょう". Instead of に, it should be で in this case, am I correct?
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AndreeJul 6 '13 at 12:20

What I have been taught in the college is that に is only used for verbs that imply motions which destination/position is required to be specified.

For example, if you say "ikimasu" (I'm going), unless already in the context, you need to specify the destination otherwise the sentence does not make sense. So, you use "ni": "asoko ni ikimasu"

On the other hand, で is used when the location of the action verbs is just additional information. For example, you can say 泣いています without specifying where you are crying and the sentence still makes sense.

This is the only answer that makes sense to me. Other answers don't. To complement, で is historically derived from に+て (nite > nte > de). に is the dative case marker, and て is a postposition meaning something like at, etc. So the question reduces to whether or not to add a postposition. This conincides with whether the phrase in question is an argument of the verb or is an additional adverbial element. So your explanation is correct.
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user458Jul 7 '11 at 2:07

This can depend on the arguments a verb takes. For example, いる uses に for location. かべでいる would make no sense. 書く takes an argument for something to be written on; 「壁に書く」 means "write on a wall", and 「壁で書く」 means "write at a wall".

For the 泣く example, you really could use either one, but で may be clearer because 泣く can take an argument marked by に to indicate cause, object or monetary amount. For example, 「彼が｛借金・訃報・千円｝に泣く」(From LCS database distributed by Okayama University). 「部屋に泣いている」 could potentially mean "he's suffering for/because of room".

They are pretty similar, but で usually indicates that an action took place at that location. So you use に when you're talking about being inside or next to something, etc. and で when you talk about doing something inside or next to something.

Edited to add: 部屋の中で泣いている is correct, because the room is the location of an action (crying).

A good check for whether a short phrase is correct is to just Google it. Google has over 200,000 hits for the correct で version, and none for the incorrect に variation. Although.. I imagine Google will soon index this page! :)

Yeah I usually use google a lot for things like this but I figure it's easier to just learn the rules so that I don't have to always use google.
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language hackerMay 31 '11 at 22:03

eeeeeh as much as I also use google to confirm grammar, sometimes the top pages are by those who use incorrect grammar. I dunno, maybe I should quote before the particles? Like "で泣いている" vs "に泣いている"
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syockitJun 2 '11 at 2:44